Safer designs for safer workplaces

The “Inconceivable” Consequences of Failure

A col­league of mine poin­ted me to this inter­est­ing art­icle by Don­ald Chris­ti­ansen that was pub­lished in the August edi­tion of IEEEUSA’s Today’s Engin­eer magazine.
As engin­eers design­ing equip­ment, we nor­mally con­duct some form of risk assess­ment. Although many com­pan­ies are still using inform­al and undoc­u­mented meth­ods, meth­od­ic­al, doc­u­mented risk assess­ments are becom­ing the norm in industry.

Since under­stand­ing the risk related to our designs is fun­da­ment­al to pre­vent­ing those risks from occur­ring, why do we con­tin­ue to see fail­ures with cata­stroph­ic res­ults occur, and why do people in the busi­ness seem to have the inform­a­tion neces­sary to recog­nize a prob­lem, and then sub­sequently fail to do what is needed to pre­vent future occur­rences?